Chronicles of Atys

What is the story?

Just wondering what the IC story is about why the occupations are showing up now.

So far, all I have gotten is Nitrouss's comments about World of Ryzomcraft.

Now, from a developer standpoint, I can understand. Several things people can work towards, that after a certain point, if they want to go after another 'branch' they have to give up all advancements on another, so instead of hitting the equivalent of '250' and stopping, when they add another branch, they loose all the exp in that branch they are giving up, so they can later strive for the '250' in that branch again.

Just wondering what people have come up with for a story for this. I know we have some wonderful minds out there, just wondering what is floating around in them.

Replies

I hadn't thought about that, but I agree it's not very realistic and it goes against the previous "you can do everything" Ryzom mentality. I honestly can't think of any good IC explanation that doesn't resort to forceful magical reasons or artificial limitations.

However just a random idea: The 8 occupation "organizations" (water company, larvesters, etc.) have an agreement between them which states that, for one reason or another, any homin can only belong to 3 organizations at any given time. If you decide to join a fourth, you must first abandon another one.

Then why do you lose all experience you had previously accumulated? That's harder to explain, and the only thing I can think of is that the workbench is actually more important for the crafting than your actual skills in that occupation. In which case gaining a grade in an occupation actually gave you access to more advanced functions of the workbench rather than becoming more skilled yourself. So after abandonning an occupation you lose all that and if you decide to start again you have to work your way up once more to gain access to those advanced functions.

However this is a rather forceful and far fetched explanation. I don't like it. Personally, I would prefer if the '3 occupations only' limitation didn't exist. And just for the records, I happen to be enjoying the occupations otherwise (minus the bugs). Just this limitation is a bit restrictive.

That's not actually the part I was wondering about the story for, but you do bring up a good point. And while people might not like it, I can understand it. After all, with the problems with plants lately in Verdant heights, it would make sense that people that are growing plants would be watched, especially those that might be novices, or those with ill intentions.

And with the low population, the Zorai would definitely need trained medics, above and beyond your average healers. Since we seek out places of greatest magnetism to build our cities, both in the new country and in the old, and in both sites there is the infestation of Goo, we certainly don't want our young to be eaten, yes?

As for the need to drop one once a homin has three in order to pick up another, why is it that we can only have one mount and three packers? Why is it that we can only have one apartment? If the boards are as important as you say, then we must be linked to them in someway, much like how the teleports to our apartments work, or how we can command our packers to follow, when we can't command others to do so.

Just to not leave the discussion off at a misinformation - you don't lose your experience when you drop an occupation. So no unrealism there and Rikutatis' explanation of the organisations only allowing you to do three occupations works just fine.

As for the occupations suddenly showing up, usually the story is that some organisation studying recovered amber cubes from the old civilisations has finally figured out how to re-invent certain techniques and teach them to the people. Similar thing happened with the introduction of outposts, mounts, etc. We always have government and business organisations working behind the scenes on rediscovering lost knowledge.

Logically speaking from a story standpoints, it would've made more sense if one occupation had been opened first, and then all the other civilisations/organisations rushed to release their own occupation soon after. But game-mechanically you have to open them all at once for fairness sake, so this is such a case where game mechanics has to trump story.